Exposed - My Mountain Man Protector

by Alexa Ross

  “That was in the bag?” I asked. “Jeez, that duffel bag is really a Mary-Poppins marvel.”

  He laughed and sat down on the log beside me. “Probably a bit silly, bringing this when we’re literally fending for our lives.”

  I shook my head. “There are more needs than just physical.”

  Our eyes met, and I glanced away, embarrassed.

  “I mean, there’s no point keeping ourselves alive here if we’re just going to go crazy from boredom and sadness.”

  He nodded slightly, as if he’d said the words himself. Then he got to playing, strumming chunks of chords, lone notes that didn’t go together, as if reminding his fingers of the feel of the strings. I listened, and he played.

  Soon the notes and the chords fused, making a song, and he started singing. It was a tune I knew but couldn’t quite place. There was something recognizable and haunting in its familiarity, in the knowledge that I’d never heard it before and yet knew it all the same. Soon I was done with the rabbit and there was only the song left, only a man and a guitar and his song sounding into the quiet night.

  Blake’s eyes closed, his whole body swaying back and forth. He had become the song, not the other way around.

  Soon I was humming along because I knew it; I knew this unknown, familiar song. It was over too soon, and there was no space for others after it. We sat there in the quiet aftermath while the night echoed back sad patterns of sound.

  “My grandad used to sing that to us when we’d come up here camping. He used to say he really had a general like that, one who had a heart, one who fought for the wrong side, fought the wrong battles. Lost.”

  He adjusted himself, his warm arm brushing mine.

  “And growing up, I always thought the song was about just that: war, fighting, soldiers, a general. But lately…”

  I glanced over. His eyes were black mirrors in the dark, reflecting the flames.

  “But lately I’ve been thinking that it’s just about life, about how we fight tooth and nail for these goals, for this success, for the pot of gold we’re sure is at the end of the rainbow, for the happiness we are sure is over the next mountain peak—how we die trying, disappointed, stuck in this pointless rat race. That this fight is not worth fighting for, that we can even see that by looking at some of our so-called successful people today: the rich, the famous, the ones who should be the happiest.”

  “I know that’s stretching it,” Blake said. “I just think that’s where I’m at now, seeing the world like this. Like we realize what really matters, what’s really important, when we’re old, when it’s too late. Like my Grandad. He tried to tell my parents, explain it to them that an enjoyable life is about the people, the experiences, that things are just things that pile up, that the sheen of success on the outside is useless if we don’t feel it inside, if it doesn’t make us happy, that living our lives for others—to beat them, impress them—is dying without the fanfare.”

  I stared into the flames, seeing myself clasping Angelo’s hand, the happiest woman in the world, in my Facebook post from Tahiti, the first three consecutive days I’d spent with my husband in a year. I saw myself hunched over the computer screen, crying on my cloud of 376 likes, crying as I read the comment, “You are the luckiest woman in the world.”

  I cried at the irony of it, at the sick mockery of reality—10 p.m. in my house a week later, alone as I would be for the rest of the week, maybe the month, lucky if Angelo came home before the middle of the night and shook me awake.

  “That’s why Grandad always had us over,” Blake said. “He got it by the end, what’s truly important. And I get it too, I think. Or at least I’m trying.”

  His arm was against mine. I was supposed to say something, but all of it loomed so enormous overhead—the lie of my life, the dust of truth that remained—that to say it would be to topple the whole thing.

  “You’re right,” I said softly. “It’s crazy, but…”

  I let the thought diminish into nothingness, into the unexpressed. I couldn’t admit it. It was too crazy, that this rupture from Angelo, this throwing into question of my whole life, everything I’d ever been, wanted, or hoped for, just might have been the best thing that had ever happened to me.

  “I’m tired,” I said, rising.

  Blake rose too.

  “I cut the sleeping bag in two. You can choose which side of the room you’d like.”

  We walked into the second room in silence.

  I choose the right side and curled up beside the wall. It was the one closer to the window.

  Lying here alone seemed twice as cold as outside. Tears came to my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the man who was hunting me or the one who was lying five feet away from me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next morning, I was the first to wake. I walked outside and inhaled the dewy air. I spun once, then again.

  It was silly, pointless, not something I would have normally done. Maybe that was the point. Over by the fire pit, the lighter was on the log Blake and I had been sitting on last night. I picked it up and lit the stack of timber still in the pit. Then it was back inside for the bread, four raisin pieces I shish-kebabed through a stick and lifted over the flames.

  As the bread deepened to a golden brown, a satisfied smile flickered on my face. I might just get this self-sufficient thing yet.

  When they were done, I slid them off, walked back inside, and dropped one on Blake’s face and one on his chest. With the last two, I returned outside, sat on the log by the fire, took big, eager bites, and stared into the flames. It was funny how something so destructive could be so beautiful.

  Next thing I knew, a hand was on my back and I was jerking upright and around. It was Blake.

  “Sorry. I keep forgetting.”

  Seeing his dismayed face and wilted paws of hands, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “It’s fine.”

  He raised the two pieces of toast. “I just wanted to get you back for this.”

  I took a big bite of mine and scoffed. “What, for making you toast?”

  Sitting down beside me, Blake turned to look me in the eye. “You know for what.”

  “No, no, you’re right,” I said, shaking my head exuberantly. “I won’t ever make you toast again. Don’t you worry.”

  He shoved me with his shoulder, and we laughed. His gaze shifted to the fire.

  “I see you’ve already mastered the art of fire.”

  I lifted the lighter. “I guess you could say that.”

  He laughed. “Ah, okay. Looks like today will be a skills day. Let’s start with fire.”

  In a few big bites, he finished his toast and then rose and stomped out the fire. He turned to me.

  “You ready?”

  I gulped down the last of my toast and nodded.

  He walked off a bit into the trees, scanning the ground. I followed.

  “Okay, first things first,” he said. “For timber, you need dry sticks. Not mostly dry; not more or less dry. The sticks you find need to be 100 percent dry. This is the most important step. If you don’t follow it, you will fail.”

  He lifted a stick. “So how’s this one?”

  I ran my fingertip across it and, feeling the moisture, wrinkled my nose.

  “Nope.”

  He patted my arm. “You’re a natural.”

  “What about these?” I asked, lifting two sticks.

  Blake inspected them with a serious air, though I wasn’t worried. These sticks couldn’t have been drier if I threw them in the oven and baked them for an hour.

  “Good,” he finally admitted.

  As he scanned the ground some more, he continued his lesson. “Step two: find more dry wood to transfer your flame to. Step three: light and repeat. Basically, you use the flame of each piece of wood to light larger and larger ones. Conversely, you could always light the first small piece of wood and immediately transfer it to a big old stack of logs, but that's trickier.”

  I
lifted a clump of dandelions and asked, “What about these?”

  Blake sighed and put a hand to his face. “I don’t know if you’re cut out for this, Claire…”

  Giggling, I shoved him. Then, turning away, I started rubbing my two sticks together. As a small tuft of flame flared up on the tip of one, I turned to Blake with a triumphant smile.

  “Oh really?”

  A second later, however, the flame had snaked down the stick to my hand.

  “Ah!” I cried, dropping it.

  One second the lit-up stick was burning on the ground, the next a tongue of fire was surging through the grass toward a tree.

  “Claire!” Blake yelled.

  Shoving by me, he ran over and jumped on the flame’s far end, stamping it out. When all that remained of the flame was a thick twine of smoke, Blake turned to face me, his mouth a snarl.

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my one hand still clutching the burned one, my knuckles white.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. You just…have to be more careful.”

  I nodded, wanting to sink into the ground and disappear.

  He patted my shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up. You were doing good, and you got the basics anyway. How about we learn some animal tracking?”

  I glanced back at the fire and past it, where the skin of the rabbit from last night was still visible, half-buried under leaves and horrifying.

  He patted my shoulder again. “We’re not going to be hunting, so don’t worry. Just tracking; that’s all.”

  “Okay,” I said, turning to him with a forced smile. “Let’s do it.”

  And we did. Blake showed me the ins and outs of tracking. He showed me how to find an animal’s rubs, scratches, gnaws, and chews on the landscape, how to spot compressions and leaf depressions on the ground. He showed me how to find prints: the shapes to look for, what animal each matched.

  The first print we found was a series of diagonal, oblong circles, which Blake identified as a deer’s. After a few minutes of breathless rushing through the trees toward the sound of rustling ahead, he paused, peering through some underbrush.

  “Looks like we’ve got a deer and her fawn not far ahead,” Blake said, lowering his voice. “This way.” He disappeared into a thick collection of underbrush.

  “Great,” I said, trying to sound enthused and not like I’d been hungry and ready to stop for an hour now.

  A few seconds later, however, even my internal dialogue had to shut up. We’d come out the other side of the underbrush. We’d spotted them, the deer we’d been following. The mother and fawn had found just the right place to pause, as if they had led us here to this.

  My eyes couldn’t decide what to focus on, the majestic creatures staring back at me or the stunning landscape behind them—the dip of the mountain with its surge of trees.

  “God, we’re lucky,” Blake said quietly.

  I didn’t say anything. There was nothing more to say.

  We crept forward slowly, carefully, the deer and her fawn watching us, waiting. Once we were close enough to touch them, they galloped off. After all, their work was done; they’d left us with the most beautiful view I’d ever seen in my life.

  Blake advanced to the cliff’s edge and sat there, his legs dangling down. I took a step forward and let my gaze fall down the cliff the hundred feet I would if I slipped. Would now have been the wrong time to tell Blake I was deathly afraid of heights?

  But it was too late. I was already sitting beside him, twisting my head away but doing it, sitting down there, dangling my legs beside his.

  “There’s nothing like it.” Blake’s voice was hushed, and I dared to look.

  My gaze swooped down, down the gradual incline of the trees, the rock, the mountain. Down farther, down to the fields and past them, trees as far as the eye could see. The expanse was more than beauty; it was more like a breathless sort of ecstasy. It was something like nature doing a dance for us, singing its own sort of song, this slow sway of the trees, this kiss of the wind on our cheeks.

  “We’re lucky,” Blake said. “I’ve never seen deer behave like that, let me get so close.” He pressed his shoulder just the slightest into mine and joked, “She must’ve liked you.”

  I smiled. I didn’t feel like talking or even thinking. All I felt like doing was being here, now, enjoying this. And I did. I sat there on the cliff and experienced it. I let the wind play with my hair, let the birds sing me sweet songs. I let the moment swallow me, digest me, make me forget everything—the good, the bad, who I was even.

  Until a century or two had passed, and then the only thing I could ask Blake was: “How can you take it?”

  It took him a moment to respond, as if he too were reorienting himself, delving back into reality.

  “Take what?” he asked.

  “All this beauty all around you, all day, all the time.”

  Blake turned to me, his eyes full, as if he’d said the words himself. “There’s nothing like it. It’s why I can’t leave.”

  I nodded and then smiled, looking away shyly. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that look in Blake’s eyes was… I returned my gaze to the mountain. There was no point in being stupid. Blake was just doing what he felt was right, trying to protect me. That was all.

  We sat there until the sun started to set. That was when it hit me, just how much time had passed. Funny how it disappeared when there were no watches and phones and appointments and little to-dos.

  When we finally rose, my belly let out a low yowl. I may have forgotten about time, but clearly my belly hadn’t.

  Blake shot me a sidelong grin. “Now that you mention it, I’m pretty hungry too.”

  We laughed, and then he said, “You hungry enough to run back?”

  My belly roared its agreement. We laughed again, and he took off, grabbing my hand. I used my other hand as a shield as we raced through the scratchy branches, burrs, and shrubs, which were all determined to slow me down.

  When we reached a clearing with water, Blake slowed, letting go of my hand to wipe his face.

  “I know you said you were hungry, but right now I’m boiling and sweaty.”

  With that, he strode up to the pond. He pulled off his pants. Then, when his shirt was over his head, he turned to me.

  “You coming?”

  His chest was incredibly muscled, and his arms looked even more massive without clothing on. I looked down at my ratty Guess T-shirt and equally ratty jeans. I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, but I was boiling.

  There was a splash, Blake now in the water.

  “It’s nice!”

  “All right, fine,” I said, turning away while I unzipped my pants.

  I looked at the black lace underwear beneath with a satisfied smile. At least I was wearing my sort-of-nice Victoria’s Secret bra and panty set.

  Once my clothes were off, I hurried into the water without looking at Blake. The shore was pure dirt, and the same went for the part underwater. It was almost like walking on sand. Once the water was up to my chin, I chanced a glance over. Blake’s gaze was fixed on me.

  I smiled. “It is pretty warm.”

  Uncomfortable under his still intent gaze, I glanced down. The water was a sheet of the night sky above. I spread my limbs and floated along the lukewarm stars, staring up at the originals, at the little army of light, each pinprick clearer than ever before.

  “The sky,” I murmured.

  “Doesn’t look like this anywhere else I’ve been,” Blake said from beside me.

  I was about to ask him if he knew anything about astrology when he said, “I can see Coma Berenices.”

  “Is that even a real constellation?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Well I don’t see anything other than a bunch of stars, some closer together than others.”

  “It’s not that hard to pick out. Here,” he said, his voice suddenly right at my ear.

  I stood up
, and he tilted my head over and then pointed.

  “It’s mainly that cluster there, see? And those few down below. See it?”

  “Kinda, though I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

  “A lady’s hair.”

  “A lady’s hair? Okay, I guess, though I still don’t get it.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, sorry. I basically threw myself in without explaining. Coma Berenices is Latin for “Berenice’s hair.” Myth has it that the Egyptian queen Berenice cut off her hair and gave it to Aphrodite to protect her husband through wartime, and that the goddess was so pleased with the offering that she took the hair up to the heavens and turned it into a cluster of stars.”